interior | INFORMATION & PERMISSIONS

ABOUT

NAME Takeshi Kovacs
SEX/GENDER Cis Male
AGE 284 stack years, 34 lived years
HEIGHT/BUILD 6'2¼". Big, broad, built.
HAIR Dark blond
EYES Green
VOICE Spoilers for Altered Carbon S1x08
CANON & CANONPOINT Altered Carbon (TV), S1x10 as Head in the Clouds is falling
CURSEMARK Diabel, right inner forearm

DISTINGUISHING MARKS Long scar cutting down into his right eyebrow. Prominent scar down his right shoulder onto his chest, roughly "A" shaped. Small coiled scar under his right pec. Two large "X" shaped scars on his right side, one over his ribs and the other a little lower. Two smaller, neater scars on the left side of his chest, and one over his ribs on the left side. Prominent scar on back of left shoulder, roughly "hash" shaped. Prominent diagonal scar on back of right shoulder, starting high on the shoulderblade and ending at his spine. Small, neat horizontal scar on back of neck. Large ouroboros dragon tattoo on his left inner forearm.

PHYSICALITY Effortlessly confident, cool, unhurried. Occupies space like he's comfortable anywhere, with anyone, and he doesn't care what anyone else has to say about it. Has a soldier's posture, but lounges and slouches a lot in furniture. Often walks around with his hands in his pockets.

Takeshi is aware of his physicality and, when necessary, deliberately changes it to illicit different responses in people or alter their perception of him.

HISTORY

HARLAN'S WORLD

Takeshi was born on a planet called Harlan's World and grew up there with his younger sister Reileen. Their father was physically abusive to their mother, and this environment caused the two to grow very close and protective of each other, though they couldn't do anything to protect their mother. Their father eventually killed her and hid the body, successfully facing no consequences for it. As such, when he threatened Rei, Takeshi took matters into his own hands, shooting and killing him.

Arrested for the murder, Takeshi was given the option to either have his stack put in storage (basically what goes for imprisonment in AC) or enlist with CTAC, a special forces government army. Takeshi agreed on stipulation that his sister be properly looked after.

Takeshi trained and served with CTAC for approx twenty years before coming back to Harlan's World on a mission. During the mission, he came face to face with Rei, working with the Yakuza, and in the immediate moment of realising each other were alive and under threat from their respective sides, they both went rogue and fought their way out together.

ENVOY

Stuck on Harlan's World, now both criminals and wanted by the Yakuza, they were forced to flee to the forests they'd explored as children. Here they crossed paths with Quellcrist Falconer, who was hiding her rebel militia in the forest. She saw something in Takeshi and offered him the chance to join her. The rebellion's cause aligning with his own anger towards CTAC, Takeshi agreed, with Rei also agreeing in order to stay at his side.

Both trained under Quellcrist to become Envoys, undertaking a series of exercises which focussed on the relationship between stack and sleeve in order to develop superior physical and mental skills and control. Takeshi grew close to Quellcrist and the other Envoys, beginning to truly believe in the ideology and cause, the basic of which being that humans should not have the option to be immortal through the use of stacks. Takeshi and Quell eventually became lovers, and Quell confided in him that she was Nadia Makita, the creator of cortical stacks, and that her long life had allowed her to see the damage that would be caused by human immortality.

On the eve of their mission to infect all stacks with a code that would give them a limited time, their base was attacked by CTAC. All of the Envoys' stacks were infected with a virus called Rawling that caused them to go insane and kill each other and the rest of the people in Strong Hold. Quellcrist and Reileen fled in a ship, but it was shot out of the air, leaving Takeshi as the only survivor.

Alone and a fugitive, Takeshi survived as a mercenary for a while, but was eventually arrested and imprisoned, with his stack put into storage.

BAY CITY

250 years later, Laurens Bancroft pays for his stack to be brought to Earth and for him to be granted parole, offering him a deal: either he solves a murder, or he's put back on ice. The murder is of Bancroft himself, who is so rich he can have endless clones of himself made and has his stack backed up every 48 hours, meaning he has lived 360 years.

Takeshi agrees and begins investigating the case, trailed by local police officer Kirsten Ortega and assisted by an AI hotel and an ex-CTAC medic. Eventually he follows the threads of the various pieces back to find his sister, still alive, who it is revealed orchestrated not only the events that led to Bancroft's death, but also manipulated things so Takeshi would be spun back up. Takeshi also realises she was responsible for the events at Strong Hold.

First forced by her manipulations to finish out the job for Bancroft as ordered, Takeshi eventually (with help) manages to reveal Rei's crimes to the police and trap her in her current stack and sleeve. This leads to a vicious fight and confrontation where she reveals to him she backed up Quellcrist's DHF and can take him to it. Takeshi is forced to make a choice between helping Rei escape or losing any chance at finding Quell. Realising Rei will never stop the path she's chosen, Takeshi shoots her in the stack. He remains with her body as Head in the Clouds falls out of high atmosphere into the water.

ABILITIES

STACK/SLEEVE Takeshi's consciousness or DHF (Digital Human Freight) is stored on a cortical stack in his vertebrae in the back of his neck. As long as this remains intact he is technically still alive and could be implanted into a different body, colloquially referred to as "sleeves". Takeshi's stack is currently in the birth sleeve of Elias Ryker.

CTAC Previously an elite special forces soldier, trained across dozens of planets on missions stretching from quelling insurgencies to dealing with local criminal activity. Has a vast range of combat experience and weaponry knowledge, as well as tactical and technological skills. Notably CTAC soldiers are trained to break their "evolved violence limitations" in order to respond more swiftly in combat situations.

ENVOY Trained by Quellcrist Falconer directly as part of the Uprising movement, Envoys were humans trained to the top possible in order to break regular human limitations and operate as elite soldiers capable of taking on absolutely any mission, on any planet, in any body. Takeshi is capable of a higher level of control over his body and mind, giving him advanced hand-to-hand combat skills, an extremely high level of spatial awareness, and to not experience "sleeve sickness" when casting into a new sleeve.

Mentally he is capable of breaking through and out of virtual constructs, and has something called "envoy intuition", which is described as absorbing all information without preconception in order to see the details and use them to whatever his ends are at the time. He can't read people's minds, but he can read people and situations.

PERMISSIONS

TOUCHING Yes. KISSING Yes. SEX Yes. POWERS USE Telepathy please check with me, his read is weird. Otherwise yes. INJURY Yes. With OOC plotting. death Yes. With OOC plotting.

FIGHT SCENES Yes. SHIPPING Yes. Will need development. FOURTH-WALLING No. BACKTAGGING Yes. THREADJACKING Yes unless it looks sensitive. OOC HARD LIMITS N/A

NOTES & PREFS

SMUT Kink list
Bisexual, Kinsey Scale 2. Service Top leaning switch.
Will claim to prefer casual sex but will establish connections despite himself.
Inured to hard kink, prefers more organic and "vanilla" encounters, but also doesn't have many limits when it comes to giving his partners what they want.

HORROR Body horror, transformations, medical horror
Cosmic horror, eldritch creatures & locations
Folk horror, cults, rituals
Demons, angels, corruption, possession
Dark fantasy, new weird, grimdark
Survival horror, dystopias, post-apocalyptic
Gothic, ghosts
Liminal spaces, abandoned areas, alien geometries
Mundane horror, surreal horror, uncanny valley
Slasher, monster, gore, cannibalism

MONSTER

appearance

The cursed knight is an omen of destruction, a huge, dark figure of ruin. His great armour is burnt and blackened, the body underneath still burning, and he leaves ash and blackened footprints with every slow, inevitable step forward. Behind him he drags a great katana with a carved bone hilt, the blade cracked and jagged.

POWERS

The blackened skin beneath the armour leaves fine remnants like soot on contact. The effects of this are dependent on the amount and the length of contact, but heighten pleasure and pain responses to potentially extreme levels. When in contact with the knight, specifically, it induces an empathic feedback loop of physical sensation. Everyone he touches feels the agony of his ever-burning, and he carries with him the agony of everyone he destroys.

behavior

The knight's path is one of death and devastation. Any obstacle he comes across in his endless march is cut down, should they attempt to stop or fight him, or raped, should they attempt to persuade or beg. Those who flee are allowed to do so. His path is fixed, and he does not stray from it to hunt or idle.